Selling chickens one part at a time

One of the interesting facets
of Pastured
Poultry Profits is
that Salatin tacked on extra information at the end to show how his
business grew and changed. One of the most recent changes to the
business model is that he finally caved in to customer requests and
began to sell his chickens by the part as well as whole. In 2010,
he charged $3.25 per pound for a broiler, but sold parts for following
prices:

Part of the
chicken

Price per
pound

Boneless skinless chicken breast

$13.00

Chicken tenders

$14.00

Legs and thighs

$4.50

Wings

$3.25

Backs for stock

$1.00

Necks for stock

$1.00

Feet for stock

$1.00

Hearts and livers

$3.00

As you can tell by the
more than ten-fold difference in price between the necks and tenders,
customers like some chicken parts much more than others. Walter
Jeffreys wrote about this concept very eloquently on his blog, explaining that meat
producers have to ensure that the whole animal gets sold. So even
though his customers might prefer that all of his time be devoted to
making bacon (or chicken tenders in the case of Salatin’s operation),
you have to raise the price of the in-demand pieces and lower the price
of everything else until sales come out even.

Although we don’t sell
any of our meat, we had to think in a similar manner when we started to
grow your own (and to buy whole lambs from a local farmer). Two
years ago, the only red meat I was comfortable cooking was steaks and
hamburger meat, but a whole lamb required me to learn how to roast
shoulders, stew up bones, and much more. Like most parts of the
sustainability learning curve, the result was good for my wallet, the
earth, and our taste buds.

Which is all a long way
of saying — even if you don’t have room for chickens in your backyard
yet, you can start your journey toward self-sufficiency by simply
learning to cook with unusual cuts of meat. Maybe then you can
afford to buy the meat from a pastured producer rather than supporting
CAFOs and factory farms.